What does it mean to be fairy grunge, cottagecore or dark academia?
I’ve come to notice that much of Gen Z has a compulsive need to label themselves. It’s gotten to a point where the amount of aesthetic micro-labels that exist is unmanageable to remember. If you put any noun in front of “-core,” there will be a label based solely on aesthetic, making it a superficial and inauthentic subgroup. So, what’s the meaning of these labels anymore? What do these “subgroups” even denote if there are thousands?
In the ’80s, there was punk rock. It meant something to be a punk rocker; it meant disrupting societal norms and authority and listening to the music. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t looking like a “weirdo”–The Dead Kennedy’s looked fairly normal. I doubt anyone is spending time wondering what it means to be fairy grunge, or to have that aesthetic, because there is no meaning to it aside from the clothes that you put on your body.
The new wave of “hippies” is the same way. To be a hippie is to hate establishment and be sustainable and free, but when these newfangled “hippies” are finding all of their clothing on SHEIN, it’s painfully ironic and does nothing but uproot the causes that real hippies of the ’60s and ’70s fought so hard for.
As a whole, the necessity of labels based solely on fashion just perpetuates the unsustainability of fast-fashion where the label shifts each month as trends shift on TikTok. People’s closets fill up with “fairy grunge,” “dark academia” and “cottagecore” clothing that’s all cheaply and unethically sourced from online retailers with dubious manufacturing practices. Influencers put together hundred-dollar hauls of clothing, all to conform to the current aesthetic trend.
If you’re looking to buy clothes sustainably, you’ll always be behind the current trend. The constantly accelerating cycle of fast fashion means that the clothing doesn’t show up in thrift stores on time, making it impossible to curate a specific aesthetic just by scouring the racks. To some of these micro-labelers, it doesn’t seem worth it to try to be sustainable if you can’t fit in.
I would say that this micro-labeling even makes our generation more divisive. All that seems to matter is clothing and the compatibility between two people based on Internet results of personality tests, a whole other set of labels.
It’s human nature to want to be an individual and different from every single other person on Earth. However, the nuance between individuals isn’t established by what one chooses to call themselves–it’s established by who they really are.
Photo courtesy of Eloise Rich/The ECHO
